I was preadolescent and impressionable,
dragged through galleries by my mother. We saw good stuff. We saw shitty
stuff. I could hardly tell one from the other. I always liked Rene
Iatba’s "I Am the Best Artist" mural painted along a fence on Wooster.
It was almost always the first thing I saw in Manhattan, since the mural
was close to where we parked, close to the Holland Tunnel. “I Am The Best
Artist,” however, has washed away like paint washed away by lots of rain,
perhaps in an attempt to express the shared fleeting nature of our common
transitory existence—something not even the Great Ones like Neal
Pollack can escape. Ali-like, the spray-painted mural represented the
chest-thumping swollen ego proclaiming itself the motherfucking man. It
wasn’t for the sake of art or proletarian blight, but a sake of its own.
But wait. It’s trickier than that, right? . . . The Great Ones get beyond
themselves? They might (like) transcend. They might have Viral Greatness,
something that infects others to recognize Greatness within. Remember George
Plimpton at the end of “When We Were Kings” pomping about Ali’s semi-spontaneous
poem: “Me, We.” Remember all those religious types doing outrageous stuff
and thereby embodying a spiritual something that’s ours to pick up on:
the Christ-within, the Buddha-Nature, a pantheistic something inherent
in all things that (oh shit) must be in us too. “I Am the Best Artist”
are words to be read, and when we (not Rene Iatba) read them we say, “I
Am the Best Artist.” Key point #1: We are reflected in the mirror the artist
sets up to admire himself.

So
what’s this all have to do with McSweeney’s
Big Night? What’s this have to do with Neal
Pollack’s Anthology of American Literature? Will Neal Pollack,
the greatest living American writer, ever vino-slurp from labia-crucifixion
rings provided by Rene Iatba? (See image) Yeah, yeah . . . Assertions.
Exaggerations. Overinterpretations. A generous ego incorporating the masses
into itself for universal benefit . . . But it’s so much trickier than
that, right? It’s much trickier when the ego in question belongs to Neal
Pollack, the greatest living American writer.

ABOUT NEAL POLLACK

Isn’t Neal Pollack
simply Dave Eggers’ Henry Bech? Isn’t he just another writerly goy’s Semitic
alterego? He’s not Dave Eggers—nope. Mr. Eggers attended in a dark and
generously cut suit, his signature curls gleaming to product-enhanced perfection.
When onstage Eggers kept his eyes on his no-doubt nice shoes, and even
selected an audience member to stand next to him and maintain eye contact.
Does he come off soft-spoken, bashful, and very likeable seeming? He does.
Next to the generally seated Eggers (more about him later) was Zadie Smith
(more about her later), then Neal Pollack. I saw him with my own eyes.
Formally garbed in black jacket, t-shirt, and jeans, his naturally short
hair also shone with product.

Neal Pollack is the Burt Reynolds
of the Cannonball Run Literati. Unibrow and black mustache run parallel
across a handsome swarth. He giggles post-feministically at his own jokes
about fucking 100-year-old Cuban whores who look a lot like camarones.
Part-Mailer, part-Hemingway, several parts Mark Leyner (without the verbal
acrobatics, with many of the tropes from Et Tu, Babe), Neal Pollack
incites the crowd to incite him to chug, and then dramatically does just
that, employing shitloads of histrionics to down pints of beer, highballs,
shots, even water. Mr. Pollack feigns exhaustion after reading a story
I’ve entirely forgotten, and John Hodgman, MC and Former Professional Literary
Agent, appears stage-right to drape a white robe across Mr. Pollack’s bowed
shoulders. The crowd’s applause refreshes Mr. Pollack’s spirit, he throws
off the cape, imitating the Godfather of Soul arisen to read another work
of genius made manifest.

Mr. Pollack cracked me up five or
six times (Internal Richter Scale readings: 5.9, 4.3, 6.2, an 8.3, a 6.7,
and possibly even another in the sixes which may have just been gas, however).
Laughter was most effectively accessed with lines describing the roaring
surf crashing into the shore like waves, or describing Cuba as a “mossy
marble,” or whenever his overblown deep-purple prose scanned the horizons
while sitting with picket-fence stakes firmly up his ass, careening there
and back again over the line separating plain and cheesy bad from delicious
and evil good.

Mr. Pollack satirizes the self-important
writer until he is the self-important writer. Neal Pollack, like a lot
of McSweeney’s Big Night, is an act, a variety show a la silly literati.
An alternative for all those who’d prefer to remain way too hip to enjoy
the Wisconsin-based radio show Prairie Home Companion. There is
a reason they choose Williamsburg’s Galapagos for McSweeney’s Big Night.
It isn’t the tall beer glasses they’re attracted to . . . it’s the big
street-side window and the reflecting pool of water just inside that reflects
the street and the outside when you lean against the bar.

I
can only speak of the act, since I haven’t read The Anthology yet.
I will maybe. I could have been first in line to buy a copy. A closing
sing-along from “Annie” sent me leaning toward the exit and then Mr. Pollack
stormed past me with a bouquet of plastic roses and aforementioned white
robe, striding to a table to victoriously sell/sign copies of the Anthology
and posters of the author in nude repose. I, however, snuck out past the
reflecting pool and the doorman. And entered my first night without Zadie
Smith.